The White Lioness

  “What happened, do you think?” asked Robert Åkerblom as they shook hands.

  “Probably nothing at all,” said Wallander. “There’s bound to be a natural explanation.”

  Wallander got hold of Björk just as he was about to leave. He was looking harassed, as usual. Wallander imagined a chief constable’s job wasn’t something to feel envious about.

  “Sorry to hear about the burglary,” said Björk, trying to look sympathetic. “Let’s hope the newspapers don’t get hold of this one. It wouldn’t look good, a detective inspector’s home being broken into. We have a high percentage of unsolved cases. The Swedish police force is pretty low on the international league tables.”

  “That’s the way it goes,” said Wallander. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  They were standing in the corridor outside Björk’s office.

  “It can’t wait till after lunch,” he added.

  Björk nodded, and they went back into the office.

  Wallander put his cards on the table. He reported in detail his meeting with Robert Åkerblom.

  “A mother of two, religious,” said Björk when Wallander had finished. “Missing since Friday. Doesn’t sound good.”

  “No,” said Wallander. “It doesn’t sound good at all.”

  Björk eyed him shrewdly.

  “You think there’s been a crime?”

  Wallander shrugged.

  “I don’t really know what I think,” he said. “But this isn’t a straightforward missing persons case. I’m sure about that. That’s why we ought to mobilize the right resources from the start. Not just the usual wait-and-see tactics.”

  Björk nodded.

  “I agree,” he said. “Who do you want? Don’t forget we’re understaffed as long as Hanson’s away. He managed to pick just the wrong moment to break his leg.”

  “Martinson and Svedberg,” replied Wallander. “By the way, did Svedberg find that young bull that was careening around the E14?”

  “A farmer got it with a lasso in the end,” said Björk glumly. “Svedberg twisted his ankle when he tumbled into a ditch. But he’s still at work.”

  Wallander stood up.

  “I’ll drive out to Skurup now,” he said. “Let’s get together at half past four and sort out what we know. We’d better start looking for her car right away.”

  He put a piece of paper on Björk’s desk.

  “Toyota Corolla,” said Björk. “I’ll see to that.”

  Wallander drove from Ystad to Skurup. He needed some time to think, and chose the coastal route.

  A wind was picking up. Jagged clouds were racing across the sky. He could see a ferry from Poland on its way into the harbor.

  When he got as far as Mossby Beach, he drove down to the deserted parking lot and stopped by the boarded-up hamburger stand. He stayed in the car, thinking about the previous year when a rubber dinghy had drifted into land just here, with two dead men in it. He thought about Baiba Liepa, the woman he’d met in Riga. Interesting that he hadn’t managed to forget her, despite his best efforts.

  A year ago, and he was still thinking about her all the time.

  A murdered woman was the last thing he needed right now.

  What he needed was peace and quiet.

  He thought about his father getting married. About the burglary and all the music he’d lost. It felt as if someone had robbed him of an important part of his life.

  He thought about his daughter, Linda, at college in Stockholm. He had the feeling he was losing touch with her.

  It was too much, all at once.

  He got out of the car, zipped up his jacket and walked down to the beach. The air was chilly, and he felt cold.

  He went over in his mind what Robert Åkerblom had said, tried various theories yet again. Could there be a natural explanation, despite everything? Could she have committed suicide? He thought of her voice on the telephone. Her eagerness.

  Shortly before one Wallander left the beach and continued his way towards Skurup.

  He couldn’t shake the conclusion he had come to: Louise Åkerblom was dead.

  Chapter Three

  Kurt Wallander had a recurring daydream he suspected he shared with a lot of other people: that he’d pulled off the ultimate bank robbery and astounded the world. He wondered about how much money was generally kept at a normal-sized bank. Less than you might think? But more than enough? He didn’t know precisely how he’d go about it, yet the fantasy kept recurring.

  He grinned to himself at the thought. But the grin quickly faded with his guilty conscience.

  He was convinced they would never find Louise Åkerblom alive. He had no evidence; there was no crime scene, no victim. And yet he knew.

  He couldn’t get the photo of the two girls out of his mind.

  How do you explain what it’s not possible to explain, he wondered. How will Robert Åkerblom be able to go on praying to his God in the future, the God who’s left him and two kids so cruelly in the lurch?

  Kurt Wallander wandered around the Savings Bank at Skurup, waiting for the assistant manager who had helped Louise Åkerblom with the property deal the previous Friday to come back from the dentist. When Wallander had arrived at the bank a quarter of an hour earlier, he had talked with the manager, Gustav Halldén, whom he had met once before. He also asked Hallden to keep any information confidential.

  “After all, we’re not sure if anything serious has happened,” Wallander explained.

  “I get it,” said Halldén. “You just think something may have happened.”

  Wallander nodded. That’s exactly how it was. How could you possibly be sure just where the boundary was between thinking and knowing?

  His train of thought was interrupted by somebody addressing him.

  “I believe you wanted to talk to me,” said a man with a fuzzy voice behind him.

  Wallander turned round.

  “Are you Moberg, the assistant manager?”

  The man nodded. He was young, surprisingly young according to Wallander’s idea of how old an assistant manager should be. But there was something else that immediately attracted his attention.

  One of the man’s cheeks was noticeably swollen.

  “I still have some trouble speaking,” sputtered Moberg.

  Wallander couldn’t understand what the man was saying.

  “We’d better wait,” Moberg said. “Shouldn’t we wait until the injection has worn off?”

  “Let’s try anyway,” said Wallander. “I’m short on time, I’m afraid. If it doesn’t hurt too much when you talk.”

  Moberg shook his head and led the way into a small conference room at the back.

  “This is exactly where we were,” explained the assistant manager. “You’re sitting in Louise Åkerblom’s chair. Hallden said you wanted to talk about her. Has she disappeared?”

  “She’s been reported missing,” said Wallander. “I expect she’s just visiting relatives and forgot to tell them at home.”

  He could see from Moberg’s swollen face that he regarded Wallander’s reservations with great skepticism. Fair enough, thought Wallander. If you’re missing, you’re missing. You can’t be half-way missing.

  “What was it you want to know?” asked the assistant manager, pouring a glass of water from the carafe on the table and gulping it down.

  “What happened last Friday afternoon,” said Wallander. “In detail. Exact time, what she said, what she did. I also want the name of the parties buying and selling the house, in case I need to contact them later. Had you met Louise Åkerblom before?”

  “I met her several times,” answered Moberg. “We were involved in four property deals together.”

  “Tell me about last Friday.”

  The assistant manager took out his diary from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “The meeting had been set for a quarter after two,” he said. “Louise Åkerblom turned up a couple of minutes early. We exchanged a few words about the weather.” br />
  “Did she seem tense or worried?” asked Wallander.

  Moberg thought for a moment before answering.

  “No,” he said. “On the contrary, she seemed happy. Before, I always thought she was uptight, but not on Friday.”

  Wallander nodded, encouraging him to go on.

  “The clients arrived, a young couple called Nilson. And the seller, representing the estate of somebody who’d died in Sövde. We sat down here and went through the whole procedure. There was nothing unusual. All the documents were in order. The deeds, the mortgage bond, the loan forms, the draft. It didn’t take long. Then we broke up. I expect we all wished one another a pleasant weekend, but I can’t remember that.”

  “Was Louise Åkerblom in a hurry?” asked Wallander.

  The assistant manager thought it over again.

  “Could be,” he said. “Maybe she was. I’m not sure. But there is something I’m quite certain about.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t go straight to her car.”

  Moberg pointed at the window, which looked out over a little parking lot.

  “Those lots are for the bank’s customers,” the assistant manager went on. “I saw her park there when she arrived. It was a quarter of an hour after she’d left the bank before she drove off. I was still in here, on the telephone. That’s how I could see everything. I think she had a bag in her hand when she got to the car. As well as her briefcase.”

  “A bag?” asked Wallander. “What did it look like?”

  Moberg shrugged his shoulders. Wallander could see the injection was wearing off.

  “What does a bag look like?” said the assistant manager. “I think it was a paper bag. Not plastic.”

  “And then she drove off?”

  “Before that she made a call from her car phone.”

  To her husband, thought Wallander. Everything fits in so far.

  “It was just after three,” Moberg went on. “I had another meeting at three-thirty, and needed to prepare myself. My own call dragged on a bit.”

  “Could you see when she drove off?”

  “I’d already gone back to my office by then.”

  “So the last you saw of her was when she was using the car phone.”

  Moberg nodded.

  “What make of car was it?”

  “I’m not so up on cars,” said the assistant manager. “But it was black. Dark blue, perhaps.”

  Wallander shut his notebook.

  “If you think of anything else, let me know right away,” he said. “Any little thing could be important.”

  Wallander left the bank after noting down the name and telephone numbers of both the seller and the buyer. He used the front entrance, and paused in the square.

  A paper bag, he thought to himself. That sounds like a bakery. He remembered there was a bakery on the street running parallel to the railroad. He crossed over the square then turned off to the left.

  The girl behind the counter had been working all day Friday, but she didn’t recognize Louise Åkerblom from the photo Wallander showed her.

  “There is another bakery,” said the girl.

  “Whereabouts?”

  The girl explained, and Wallander could see it was just as close to the bank as the one where he was now. He thanked her, and left. He made his way to the bakery on the other side of the square. An elderly lady asked him what he wanted as he entered the shop. Wallander showed her the photograph and explained who he was.

  “I wonder if you recognize her?” he asked. “She might have been here shopping shortly after three o’clock last Friday.”

  The woman went to fetch her eyeglasses in order to study the photo more carefully.

  “Has something happened?” she asked, curious to know. “Who is she?”

  “Just tell me if you recognize her,” said Wallander gently.

  The woman nodded.

  “I remember her,” she said. “I think she bought some pastries. Yes, I remember quite clearly. Napoleons. And a loaf of bread.”

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “How many pastries?” he asked.

  “Four. I remember I was going to put them in a carton, but she said a bag would be OK. She seemed to be in a hurry.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Did you see where she went after she left?”

  “No. There were other customers waiting to be served.”

  “Thank you,” said Wallander. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “What happened?” the woman asked.

  “Nothing,” said Wallander. “Just routine.”

  He left the store and walked back to the rear of the bank where Louise Åkerblom had parked her car.

  Thus far but no further, he thought. This is where we lose track. She sets out from here to see a house, but we still don’t know where it is. After she’d left a message on the answering machine. She’s in a good mood, she has pastries in a paper bag, and she’s due home at five o’clock.

  He looked at his watch. Three minutes to three. Exactly three days since Louise Åkerblom was standing on this very spot.

  Wallander walked to his car, which was parked in front of the bank, put in a music cassette, one of the few he had left after the break-in, and tried to summarize where he’d gotten so far. Placido Domingo’s voice filled the car as he thought about the four pastries, one for each member of the Åkerblom family. Then he wondered if they said grace before eating pastries as well. He wondered what it felt like to believe in a god.

  An idea occurred to him at the same time. He had time for one more interview before they were gathering at the station to talk things through.

  What had Robert Åkerblom said?

  Pastor Tureson?

  Wallander started the engine and drove off towards Ystad. When he came out onto the E14, he was only just within the speed limit. He called Ebba at the station switchboard, asked her to get hold of Pastor Tureson and tell him Wallander wanted to speak to him right away. Just before he got to Ystad, Ebba called him back. Pastor Tureson was in the Methodist chapel and would be pleased to see him.

  “It’ll do you no harm to go to church now and again,” said Ebba.

  Wallander thought about the nights he’d spent with Baiba Liepa in a church in Riga the previous year. But he said nothing. Even if he wanted to, he had no time to think about her just now.

  Pastor Tureson was an elderly man, tall and well built, with a mop of white hair. Wallander could feel the strength in his grip when they shook hands.

  The inside of the chapel was simple. Wallander did not feel the oppression that often affected him when he went into a church. They sat down on wooden chairs by the altar.

  “I called Robert a couple of hours ago,” said Pastor Tureson. “Poor man, he was beside himself. Have you found her yet?”

  “No,” said Wallander.

  “I don’t understand what can have happened. Louise wasn’t the type to get herself into dangerous situations.”

  “Sometimes you can’t avoid it,” said Wallander.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There are two kinds of dangerous situations. One is the kind you get yourself into. The other just sucks you in. That’s not quite the same thing.”

  Pastor Tureson threw up his hands in acknowledgment. He seemed genuinely worried, and his sympathy with the husband and their children appeared to be real.

  “Tell me about her,” said Wallander. “What was she like? Had you known her long? What sort of a family were the Akerbloms?”

  Pastor Tureson stared at Wallander, a serious expression on his face.

  “You ask questions as though it were all over,” he said.

  “It’s just a bad habit of mine,” said Wallander apologetically. “Of course I mean you should tell me what she is like.”

  “I’ve been pastor in this parish for five years,” he began. “As you can probably hear, I’m originally from Göteborg. The Akerbloms have been members of my congrega
tion the whole time I’ve been here. They both come from Methodist families, and they met through the chapel. Now they’re bringing up their daughters in the true religion. Robert and Louise are good people. Hard-working, thrifty, generous. It’s hard to describe them any other way. In fact, it’s hard not to talk about them as a couple. Members of the congregation are shattered by her disappearance. I could feel that at our prayer meeting yesterday.”

  The perfect family. Not a single crack in the façade, thought Wallander. I could talk to a thousand different people, and they would all say the same thing. Louise Åkerblom doesn’t have a single weakness. Not one. The only odd thing about her is that she has disappeared.

  Something doesn’t add up. Nothing adds up.

  “Something on your mind, Inspector?” asked Pastor Tureson.

  “I was thinking about weakness,” said Wallander. “Isn’t that one of the basic features of all religions? That God will help us to overcome our weaknesses?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But it seems to me like Louise Åkerblom didn’t have any weaknesses. The picture I’m getting of her is so perfect, I start getting suspicious. Do such utterly good people really exist?”

  “That’s the kind of person Louise is,” said Pastor Tureson.

  “You mean she’s almost angelic?”

  “Not quite,” said Pastor Tureson. “I remember one time when she was making coffee for a social evening the chapel had organized. She burnt herself. I happened to hear that she actually swore.”

  Wallander tried going back to the beginning and starting again.

  “There’s no chance she and her husband were fighting?” he asked.

  “None at all,” replied Pastor Tureson.

  “No other man?”

  “Of course not. I hope that isn’t a question you’ll put to Robert.”

  “Could she have felt some kind of religious doubt?”

  “I regard that as being out of the question. I’d have known about it.”

  “Was there any reason why she might have committed suicide?”

  “No.”

  “Could she have gone out of her mind?”